The present invention relates in general to voting machines, and more particularly to programmable electronic voting machines of the microprocessor-based type.
To date, only mechanical voting machines, such as the types illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,054,102 and 3,054,557, have met with wide commercial success. Such mechanical machines are highly reliable in terms of accurately recording and totalizing valid voter selections. However, these mechanical machines are inherently complex and include large numbers of moving parts requiring frequent maintenance. Also, the prior art mechanical voting machines are large and cumbersome thus requiring great amounts of manpower for delivering the machines to polling locations, setting up the machines, and then returning them to storage subsequent to an election. Further, a trend towards larger numbers of election candidates and issues taxes the limited capacity of many mechanical voting machines.
With the relatively recent advent of microprocessor-based computer systems it is possible from both a functional and an economic standpoint to provide, as replacements for mechanical voting machines and other voting systems such as computer punch card systems, programmable electronic voting machines that can electronically record and store vote tallies at the polling sites. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,015,106 represents an early attempt at a programmable electronic voting machine.
While numerous programmable electronic voting machines have been designed and promoted as replacements for mechanical voting machines or other voting systems, to the present inventor's knowledge none of such prior art electronic voting machines have yet met with wide commercial success because they cannot meet all of the numerous unique requirements confronting the electronic voting machine designer.
For example, the ideal electronic voting machine should be simple to program by precinct voting officials who are for the most part not technically oriented, and more importantly should be simple to operate by a technically unsophisticated voter. In other words, the ideal electronic voting machine should be "user friendly". To this extent, the ideal electronic voting machine should present to a voter ballot information and vote selection means in a traditional fashion, i.e. in a fashion with which a voter would be familiar from his past experience with mechanical voting machines or other voting systems. It is traditional to have a unique voting lever or switch means physically associated with each vote selection presented by the ballot. Therefore, a vote selecting, alpha-numeric keyboard unit which is set apart physically from the visually displayed ballot information, while perhaps customary from a computer terminal design standpoint, is undersirable from a voter acceptability standpoint.
As a further example, the ideal electronic voting machine must be highly reliable and accurate in terms of recording and tallying valid vote selections. Because electronic systems are inherently susceptable to electrical and electromagnetic interference, the required reliability and accuracy of the electronic voting machine is much more difficult to achieve than was the case with the prior art mechanical voting machines.
As a further example, the ideal electronic voting machine must be rugged, self-contained, long-lived and readily portable since, like the prior art mechanical voting machines, it will be moved, set up, and broken down for extended periods of storage, many times throughout its useful life.
As a further example, like their earlier mechanical counterparts, the ideal electronic voting machine should, to a reasonable and determinable degree, be tamperproof and should be failsafe in that a power outage, interruption or other electrical failure will not invalidate all vote tally information already accumulated by the electronic voting machine.
It is the above design requirements and others familiar to those skilled in the art that the electronic voting machine of the present invention is intended to fully meet.